I literally use my own blog articles as a reminder and a guide to my next choices in my training with Morgan. Although Patty, her owner, is a parrot health and nutrition guru, she is not a trainer and so I will be training them both. I find this much easier to do if Patty can be part of the process, which has been part of my hope all along. This week I decided to try again with incorporating her.

Morgan is changing throughout this process; she is growing into her own, becoming a confident parrot.. and characteristics and personality traits are evolving with those changes. No one stays the same when they go through a process of growth and evolution.

It ended up being a success with a couple bumps in the road. Although Morgan is fine with Patty standing around in the room to be present for sessions now, she is not ok with her standing NEXT to me yet.That will be my next goal. I'd love for Morgan's behavior not to be altered by Patty's presence when she's next to me for 1 second, or 3 seconds. We will build up from there, but that's the initial next goal.

I'm planning to continue with my previous goals. These are just steps to achieving those.

To help Patty's relationship with Morgan:

Patty is going to be touch training her (with at least 3-4 repetitions) while Morgan is INSIDE the cage around once a day when possible. I'd like to see this happen every day, but depending on Patty's work schedule we will see. She can easily do this before meals for Morgan. It's a small thing with big results.

I may consider having Patty be the one to start weighing Morgan each morning and tracking her weight (I have been doing this, but Patty could use larger rewards like a whole almond.) This will teach Morgan to be excited to step up for her, and is just another way to interact and associate Patty positively.

Continue with being the one to care for her (cage cleaning, water and feedings, etc.) This is going well and has not been a problem so I'd like this to stay in place.

Because I am working on the goal with Patty more heavily, I will hold off on the interaction with my own birds in case that could de-rail my current successes and is not as necessary at this point.